Author: Alan Vanneman

For the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be running a lot of “Well, You Needn’t” clips. This one features Freddie Hubbard and Johnny Griffen.

Judy Bachrach, writing in the World Affairs Journal, gives us a grim reminder of the horrors that make up the daily lives of women in Islamic nations, and of Islamic women in European ones. How pathetic, how disgusting are those members of the Western Left who seek to affirm their virtue by “understanding” modern Islam….

I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to Charles Krauthammer, but in today’s column the good doctor punches a two-bagger right between my legs, politely explaining to liberals just why paying doctors to provide end-of-life counseling to patients might tend to piss off the “pro-life” crowd, something that might have been foreseen…

With David Liebman, soprano saxophone, Palle Danielsson, bass, and Courtney Pine, tenor saxophone, somewhere in Italy, somewhere in the Eighties.

Slate has a disgusting article by two Republican lawyer goons, Lee Casey and David Rivkin Jr., who served under Ronnie and George I, denouncing those damn judges who take seriously Justice Anthony Kennedy’s “oft-quoted statement that to free the president and Congress from judicial supervision would amount to a holding that ‘the political branches have…

Of the many firestorms blazing around the topic of health care, one of the smallest but brightest involves Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, medical “ethicist” and oncologist-advisor to President Obama. Dr Emanuel was broadsided by Betsy McCaughey in a New York Post column here, much to the outrage of all left-minded people. It seems little Betsy had…

Yeah, it’s summertime, all right, and the living is easy, but Anne Applebaum wants to rain all over your parade. It’s August, after all, and you know what happened in August! World War I! Forget the sunblock, dude, and strap on a gas mask! In her latest, greatest effusion, billed as “Beach Worrying” at Slate,…

My latest n’ greatest, pretty much, at Bright Lights Film Journal is a review of one of my favorite Fred Astaire films, Royal Wedding. The presence of Jane Powell, plus the music of Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner, helped blast Fred out of his late forties rut. The review is here, and the whole…

“Green Chimneys,” one of Thelonious Monk’s less well-known tunes, is named for a private school in Manhattan, attended by children of the tragically hip.

Mary Jane: “Why would Doc Oc want to attack Wolverine?” Oh, Mary Jane, do you believe that supervillains display only a motivated malignity? In any case, Spiderman, correct for once, provides an adequate answer: “ ’cause Logan cut one of his tentacles.” After all, if someone cut one of your tentacles, how would you like…